Iheartmedia Management Services, Inc.

Todd Louis Goldberg

Jeffrey Lee Littlejohn

David C Jellison, Jr

Daniel N MacTiernan

Jeffrey James Bengel

A media stream includes multiple spot blocks representing portions of time assigned to particular media content, where some of the plurality of spot blocks include primary media content, and others include advertising content. The media stream also includes a contextual marker embedded in at least one of the spot blocks. The contextual marker includes information used by a media player to transmit a tracking call in response to reading the contextual marker.

Media stream including embedded contextual markers

A streaming media server inserts contextual markers into a media stream being delivered to an end user device for play out to an end user. The contextual markers can be inserted in-band into spot blocks, and can be used to identify media items included in the spot block. When the contextual markers trigger the end-user device to send a message identifying the media content, e.g. a particular show, included in the spot block to a data management platform (DMP). The DMP uses the messages triggered by the contextual markers to attribute the end user to the media content. If a threshold number of attributions is received, and if the attributions are sufficiently recent, the end user can be a associated with an audience segment. The attribution and association information can be delivered to an ad server, which uses that information to select targeted advertisements to air during the show.

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Todd Louis Goldberg